Hello Pot Meet Kettle
by CarrionEater
Summary: Much of Starscream's insults may just as well be aimed at himself. A bit of silliness in battle.


_Hello, Pot; Meet Kettle_

Carrion has learned many important lessons from Starscream over the course of their acquaintance. Determination, cunning, thinking on the fly; he's learned the art of deception well enough to convincingly lie whenever it's required of him, even in the face of enormous punishment.

Though flighty, he can fight as well as anyone would expect a mech of his age and build to be capable of; at times he's even surprisingly clever in battle, making a wonderful snipe or a brilliant hand-to-hand strike. This, too, is largely Starscream's doing, though Eks has contributed much to his understanding of weaponry.

He's learned that wounds come and go, pain is fleeting, scars can be hidden and eventually patched, but a destroyed ego is a killed mech.

Starscream has ground these lessons into him, by one means or another. Working with their bond or straining painfully against it, he's forced Carrion to grow up and make something useful of himself. Even if he's the only one who can see how useful the small flier really is.

What Carrion finds is the lesson he's most learned from Starscream, however, is instruction the other almost certainly had not intended to give. He's learned to roll with the punches, both figurative and literal. To let the harsh criticism and cruel comments roll off his high-polished back like so much rain, and not let it bother him when the Air Commander calls him stupid, useless, or incompetent.

Of course, ignoring the larger mech is impossible. Partially because some part of Carrion, even after all these years, still loves the sound of that voice, and can't help giving it some attention. And there's also the fact that, as repetitive as Starscream can be, Carrion does occasionally have to participate in the conversation.

Right now, though, isn't the best time for him to be paying attention to anything other than his own work. He doesn't exactly know how he managed it, but he does know that his arm – well, the stump of it that's still attached – is in a great deal of pain, and they've managed to get pinned down. For once, the unfavorable turn of the battle isn't his fault; it's merely bad luck. He fully expected Starscream to leave him to fend for himself – in all likelihood, the Autobots would have forgotten him – but Starscream has always been so predictably unpredictable. He'd swooped back down from the sky like a missile, and now provided the covered from under which Carrion was trying to repair himself.

Over the battle-noise; the laser fire, the explosions, the shouting and marching and whine of engines, Starscream is berating him. He calls him reckless, idiotically sentimental, berates him for sticking his neck out for the sake of their bond, all while firing nonstop back at the Autobot who has them pinned in this stupid canyon.

All Carrion can think as his Commander snarls his criticism is, Hello, pot; have you met kettle? But this is what he gets for using what little skill he's picked up to save his bond-mate a few new scars; a neatly severed arm and absolutely no gratitude.

"Commander? Sweety?" He says, using the human pet name because he knows it prickles at his mate and even in pain he enjoys annoying the larger seeker. "I'm really sorry I got my arm shot off trying to keep you alive, but could you let me try to weld what's left back on so we can get the fuck out of here?"

Just as it usually does, his unfathomably crude speech, intermingled with human colloquialisms, seems to stun the Air Commander into silence for a moment, leaving him to stare down at the smaller mech with something between anger, confusion, and disgust on his face.

The battle reasserts itself, as it always must, but Starscream focuses less on his lecture and more on keeping their defense up. Gritting his teeth in pain, but not without a little humor, Carrion returns to salvaging his arm.

A/N: Just a bit of silliness, trying to suggest how the pair of them might get on later in their bond, if indeed they both lived long enough to settle into the 'old married couple' category.


End file.
